The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 1927. TINKERING WITH EDUCATION

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 26, 22 April 1927, Page 8

The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 1927. TINKERING WITH EDUCATION

A SPECIAL committee of scholarly experts under the intellectual guidance of the Minister of Education has been engaged since December on an exhaustive overhaul of the various courses of study in the State schools. In the jargon of a restless 1 clan its task is known as'a revision of the school curricula. The aim of the Minister and the committee is to shape a perfect system of school studies and examinations out of the present mass or muddle of overweighted and overlapping syllabuses. Something, like complete freedom of action has been given to the investigators. They were instructed by the Hon. R. A. Wright, in a comic phrase, “to review the whole question from Dan to Beersheba.” Tt is difficult to know what an ancient day’s journey lias to do with modern school curricula. Perhaps the reference was intended to denote the similarity of a barren territory. For many years past an outstanding defect in the Dominion’s system of school education has been the extravagant continuity of political interference with it at the expense of simplicity and real progress. With each change of government there has been another new movement for a thorough overhaul. Commissions and committees have followed one another like itinerant tinkers until the whole system has become a vast patchwork of alterations and repairs. And still the end is not in sight. So far, the main result of all the tinkering lias been an amazing increase in the cost of general education, both for the taxpayers and the parents of school children. Expenditure by the State on education is close on 164,000,000 a year. It may be argued by the experts, of course, that educational service is worth the money, but the average man and woman will not readily believe it. No one wants to hinder any children from obtaining what is called a liberal education, but there is reason to doubt the value of liberality, if it does nothing more than teach the youth of the Dominion to dislike hard work and drive them into crowded roads toward the mirage of easy money, and good times without the experience of muscle-ache. It is rather a poor educational investment on the part of the State to spend £IOOO in providing a sheltered clerkship or two at £3 a week for life. It has been well said that the real point of education is to teach children how to learn, so that a child’s education may last through the whole of its life. Can it be said truthfully that the present system of education in New Zealand is teachingchildren to learn how to make the most of life not only for themselves, but for their country and Empire? What is required much more than elaborate curricula and pretentious examinations is a simple syllabus, with less of the fatigue of home-lessons and the study of relatively useless subjects. If the special committee cannot meet that necessity, then the Minister of Education should go farther than from Dan to Beersheba and not come back. “RINGING-IN” FOREIGN GOODS CO-INCIDENT with satisfaction expressed in Auckland yesterday by members of the New Zealand-Made Preference League that public prejudice against New Zealand-made goods had largely been overcome, and that people were only too glad to purchase the manufactures of their own country, was the complaint by the Canterbury Manufacturers’ Association that a number of Dominion manufacturers are in the habit of importing foreign clothing and selling it as New Zealand-made material. That such trade tricks should be indulged in by a minority of manufacturers, while others are seeking to produce the best possible articles to stimulate the demand for genuine New Zealand products, is little to the credit of those responsible. If pride in local achievement is overcome by the greed for greater profit, and there is no other Way to prevent this imposition on a public which is at last showing a healthy preference for New Zealand manufactures, the Legislature must be appealed to for the protection of the honest manufacturer, and of the purchaser. It is suggested by the organiser of the Canterbury Manufacturers’ Association that the Government should be asked to amend existing legislation in order to stop such unworthy trafficking. Clothing is mainly concerned in this misrepresentation, and it is stated that the evil has existed for a long time, and that, as a result, the Kaiapoi and other large mills have been forced to put off hands, thus increasing unemployment. It is pointed out that the importation of clothing does more to injure the internal trade of the country than anything else, as the cost of the making of the siiit is so small in comparison with the cost of the material. It is further instanced that since the new tariff provisions have been in operation in Australia, mills there have been working overtime to cope with the demand for Australian-made cloth. The seriousness of this question must be apparent to the Government. What is being done with regard to clothing will be done by unscrupulous traders in other avenues, and we may yet be buying New Zealand tikis made in Tokio, among other articles.of “local manufacture.” If the clothing trade is in need of more protection, the Government should not hesitate to give it, and, in any case, no time should be lost in providing that all products manufactured in New Zealand should be so stamped, and that the misuse of such national trademark should be subject to a heavy penalty, and one that would effectually prevent misrepresentation.